 Thank you for tuning in to From Book Bands to Inclusive Education. I'm Joe Wilkes, editor of The Thread, New America's in-house digital editorial platform and monthly newsletter. We launched The Thread in 2021 to showcase the talent of New America's staff and elevate stories that connect policy, equity, and culture. Since its beginning, we envision taking these impactful stories from the page and bringing them to a live audience. This event came together as a partnership between The Thread and New America's Education Policy Program on a timely topic that is close to our heart as storytellers and researchers, making the case for diverse books and inclusive education. In this event, you'll hear from two panels on the origins of book bands, the importance of diverse books for student success, and how we might safeguard access to these materials for all. We apologize as there were technical difficulties during the event's start that prevented the video from picking up audio. During the outage, our first panel, How Diverse Books Set Students Up for Success, provided a brief overview of the history of book banning and how similar tactics are used today. You'll be jumping into the first panel a couple of minutes in. The panel is moderated by Adam Harris, our writer at the Atlantic covering education and national politics, and the author of The State Must Provide, a narrative history of racial inequality in higher education. He is joined by an order from left to right, Maika Moulet, social media manager at New America, Howes University PhD candidate, and young adult author of books like Dear Haiti, Love Aileen, and one of the good ones, Ravita Raman, parent and co-founder of One Will Co. in Williamson County, Tennessee, and Natasha Tarpley, fellow in the Learning Sciences Exchange and acclaimed children's book author. Her works include I Love My Hair, The Me Eyes Used to Be, and so much more. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. Children's books are that place where you can connect all of the pieces of who you are. And that's what I hope to do in my work, to encourage kids to explore these many pieces of who they are, their interests, their concerns, their fears, their loves, their passions. And so for me, that is really the beauty and also the tool of resistance that I think children's books offer, because they are a way to connect someone with their own source of power, which in this context is often very dangerous. And just a note on history, the other thing that I've been thinking a lot about in this context of banned books is how, especially in African American tradition and other traditions as well, books and other written materials were very closely tied to activism and very closely tied to a call to action. So if you have a newspaper, take for example the Chicago Defender that was disseminated across the country and encouraged black folks in the south to migrate north. If you have even something like a black book club, these kinds of places were gathering spaces where places of discussion that kind of activated people's minds. If you think about black book clubs now, I think this is one of the resources that can be very helpful to us in this banned book discussion. These black book clubs are huge. So they not only are space to talk about literature, but they purchase books. They have buying power and they often have activism associated with it in terms of going out into the community and connecting with other groups and children especially. So all of these kind of pieces to me are very much connected. Absolutely. And actually to your point about there have been these efforts in the past to try to ban books, but they have not been successful or if they have, it's been for a small period of time. And then the folks who are fighting back against those who are sensorious ultimately end up winning the day. And I think that's an important point because we often center those who are trying to censor rather than those who are fighting back against those censors. And Mike, can you just talk a little bit about the importance of doing that, right? The importance of thinking about those folks who are really pushing back against the sensors? Yes. So something that Natasha actually just mentioned, it sparked a scholar. Her name is Dr. Rudeen Sims Bishop. And Dr. Bishop talks about books, especially as it relates to young people being a place as mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors. And so the idea is that as a young person is reading a book, they might see themselves reflected with it as a mirror. They might be able to see somebody's experience that is different from theirs, where they are seeing it through the window. And then they might have the opportunity to step through and actively engage and that's that sliding glass door component. And so when we think about book bands and how they have happened in the past, we very often look at the bands that have happened, but we don't really examine the individuals who have been successful in overturning those bands. And also when we consider these things, there are very specific ideologies about who has power and who remains in subordinated positions when we center certain voices as we talk about book bands. So in highlighting the bands that are successful, we are more often highlighting predominantly white, predominantly conservative families who don't want these texts. But then that means that people who have identities outside of this don't have their stories reflected. And we know through media studies that the way that we interpret the world is very much impacted by the books we read, the television that we watch, the films that we watch, they help provide us with the language to grapple with the very real circumstances that we have in life. And so although a book might be a work of fiction, it actually carries real world consequences. And for me as well as a young adult author, I co-write with one of my sisters, that is something that as an author, especially if you have a marginalized identity, you carry this with you in your work. And it's not something that you, and I'm speaking generally here, but you don't go into it with the level of callousness that I'm just writing this story for the sake of writing the story. There absolutely is that element, but then there's this understanding that stories featuring people who look like you, who experience the world like you, have not always had a space. And so that is very important for us because it becomes not solely an educational issue, it becomes a political issue. Absolutely. You know, I've been thinking, as you've all been talking, right, you know, we've been thinking a lot, right, in education circles and education spaces, just generally about chronic absenteeism recently, right, and one of the ways that people combat chronic absenteeism are one of the things that get students engaged in school. There's some research that shows that if you have a teacher that looks like you within the first three to four periods of the day, you are more likely to be engaged in school, right? It has a tail as it, as the day goes along, but that importance of sort of seeing yourself in those spaces, it proves important. And we already know that books featuring diverse characters are already a slim fragment of the market. But, but, you know, Ravina, I wanted to talk to you about what you see sort of on the ground, right, in Williamson County. How has this played out in your county, right, and how have you been able to fight back against some of this? It's been a challenge, and I think we are currently experiencing a lawsuit in our district now against certain books. I actually got to participate on a panel with school books, a fifth grade book called Always Slipped My Mind at the Moment, but it really talked about the Civil War and the woman's role in the Civil War. The River Between Us is the name of the book. And so I was really, you know, I shared with you all about my experience at the plantations and telling one side of the story. So I really came into that book review kind of feeling like I'm not going to like this book. And when I actually read it, it was such a good book. And it told a perspective about the Civil War that we often don't hear, which is the perspective from a woman's aspect. We always hear about the men who were fighting and the young boys who were fighting, but never that. So but it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy. And so I think, you know, even with the cost of bookbans, it's just gotten to be very expensive. A lot of man hours. We're doing this in areas where we already don't pay teachers well. And then we're taking all of this time away from where we could to apply to these book reviews that our district ended up, you know, after reviewing all those books, they ended up keeping them on the on the shelves. And then we had a group of families that came in and have now sued the district. So it just makes it a little bit more challenging when you're doing that. But we our community has done a really good job by showing up at the school board meetings, being present and just being open to have conversations about these and why it's important for us to continue to remain engaged and show up all the time. Yeah. And Natasha, I actually wanted to ask you a similar question about sort of student success, right? Thinking about how seeing yourself reflected in your, in the literature that you are consuming, sort of, it can instill a sense of pride. It can instill a sense of history. It can also just teach you new things, right? Because sometimes it's not just the students who are trying to see themselves reflected in the stories, but it's the students who may need to learn about other cultures that are that, you know, people are trying to take that away from them. So can you talk a little bit about what a diverse set of books actually does for students, for children? Yeah, I mean, I think stories in general help us to form connections with other people. When we can share our story, we have a sense of ownership, of contribution, and then we have other people who can kind of reflect back to us and say, oh, yeah, I went through that. I experienced that. And unfortunately, what really I think is a tragedy around these bookbans is that, as you were saying, Rita, that it just, it makes us kind of fit within this paradigm so that those sources of connection are interrupted and they're blocked. So that's, that's one thing. But I think the diversity overall, for me, it's important to not only see, you know, racial diversity, but also diversity within groups, diversity within, you know, how people live their lives. And so that, that's also very important to me because I'm often very frustrated by the depictions that I see, even of black children and children's literature. And so I think bookbans offer us the opportunity to kind of ask some questions about, well, what are the stories that we want, what are the stories that we want to tell? How do we want to engage with each other's stories? What is out, what is not being shared that, that we need to share? And kind of focusing on our own, the resources that we have, you know. And I think we attach a lot to books and they're very important. But the other thing about it is that books are a vehicle. Books are a vehicle for that source of sharing. I think we need to kind of hold that very dear and understand that when you are in the world, that you are a source of that connection, that you are a source of that sharing. I mean, we just had a conversation sitting over there about, you know, racial disparity and it's just like, oh wow, you know, I never knew that. Oh, I never knew that. So those kinds of interactions happen beyond books. I think when we're thinking about book bands, we need to address that very directly, but we also need to be very conscious of the resources that we have individually as well as collectively. Can I add something to that? Yes, absolutely. I think, and what you touched on, I think a lot of times one of the things that we had a talk with our district about was, you know, the materials that we currently have often depict African-Americans during points of trauma. That's not our only story. We have so much more positive things to tell. So just trying to highlight, you know, even during our 28-day black history month of being able to highlight, you know, other things other than the same traditional people that we often hear of. So trying to expose and share information about other opportunities is so important. Absolutely. Absolutely. And actually, Mike, I wanted to ask you the same question about that sort of narrow lens, right? When we're thinking about, when we have the broader conversations naturally, it's like, oh, well, you know, you're banding, teaching about history or you're banding, teaching about, you know, but it's looking at, you know, black American history or Latin American history, right, through a very narrow lens. And thinking both historically and in the present moment, kind of, can you just sort of sit with that for a moment, right? How that limits our understanding of what literature can offer us and what, as Natasha was talking about, how we can connect with that literature and how we can connect with each other. Yes. So when people say representation matters, it's not just a catchphrase that we were saying. It's because when you see yourself reflected on the page, on the screen, it lets you know that your experiences matter, that your voice deserves to be elevated to the point of the main character, the focus. And so when we have book bands that are occurring, it's essentially helping us to reinforce who remains in the subordinated positions in society. And if you don't know, if you don't see yourself reflected in the stories, then you are less inclined to read. And so if you are less inclined to read, the opportunities that you have later on might also decline. It's not only a matter of, you know, having people have access to different stories that they might not necessarily know about. It's being able to engage and critically examine the work that we have. You know, sometimes we are very often talk about wanting young people to get to, you know, the hallowed halls of academia. But in order to get there, there has to be a stretching of that critical thinking muscle. And a lot of that comes through reading books. You are going through a very introspective journey when you are reading a book. It's just you and the text. Or if you're listening to the audio. And then as time progresses, you think about yourself in the role of the main character. You navigate the experiences that you have. Oops, sorry. You navigate the experiences that you have. And then tie it and find the commonalities with someone who maybe looks entirely different than you. Also, the books that are frequently banned, they are very much target topics around sex and sexuality. But we also have books that target, you know, black stories, Jewish stories, stories from marginalized groups. And when you even examine, if you go out there, we have a table that we are, thanks to Jasmine, she was able to share so many books from her personal collection of banned books. You'll look through the topics there. You know, you have things about accepting your queer identity, learning critical language, all of these things. And when you look, you say, these are the books that you all are banning. These are the things that you don't want young people to understand. And it's because it's helping folks to have the language to then engage with one another, to be uncomfortable in that discomfort in that learning process. So I can go on and on. Well, actually, you know, I wanted to sit with you for one more second, just because, you know, as an author, right, how are you thinking about this as you are writing books? How are you thinking about your audience as your writing books? Because, you know, being, you know, you write with your sister, you said, and being, you know, being an author can sometimes be a, it's a very solitary experience, oftentimes. So how are you thinking about both this moment, but also just these ideas more generally as you were writing? And Tash, I'll have the same question for you. Yeah. So the first book that my sister and I wrote was called Dear Haiti Love Elaine. And we wrote that story because when we were growing up, our parents were very strict and we weren't allowed to watch TV during the weekdays. So we would go to the library every weekend and max out on the number of books that we could read. And diversity at the time was white girls with red hair. So we read like Pippi Long stockings and Nancy Drew and all of these wonderful books that even though we looked nothing like these characters, we were still able to find so many commonalities. And so writing Dear Haiti Love Elaine was our opportunity to take a story that was not personal to us per se because Elaine comes from a very wealthy family and we do not. But being able to highlight the experience of a Haitian-American finding her identity. And then our second book, one of the good ones grapples with the history of oppression in the United States. And it talks about, you know, we talked about like these intragroup dynamics how sometimes even within community we will reinforce some of the hegemonic statuses. And then our most recent work is called The Summer of Aether Rich, which is highlighting just class inequality. So I very much take this into the work that I write, but I also make it entertaining. It's fun. And that's the balance that you have. Like just being able to maybe educate folks, but most importantly to entertain and see yourself as the main character and worthy of that focus. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's kind of that's exactly the approach that I take as well. I think it's really important to have entertaining stories. When I first started writing for children way back when many of the books that I was seeing that featured African-American children or that were about African-American subject matter were often very heavy. They to me felt, you know, as Rita was saying, very traumatic. There's a lot of trauma going on. And I really wanted to interrupt that a little bit. I love my hair became kind of this hair book that people embrace and and, you know, feel good about in terms of their hair. But for me, it's also deeper than that. I mean, it's it's important to have that kind of self-esteem. But for me, it was really embedding that intention of kind of inviting kids to really celebrate who they were beyond just the their physical characteristics. I wanted to create a book that was filled with a sense of joy and whimsy and that also really prioritized this little girl's relationship with her mom. In fact, that was the inspiration for the story, the moments that I shared with my mom when we when she was combing my hair. As I was saying earlier, these books that I was reading, I'd read all the Pippi Longstockies and all that stuff. And we learned very, very quickly to project our experiences because even if we're having those experiences in our lives, they're not often depicted in the books that we're reading. And I still think we have a ways to go with doing that now in the current publishing climate. It's getting better, but I think there's still a ways to go. And so for me, it's very important to embed those intentions and those invitations in whatever I do. And also to tie it into a sense of activism, again, going back to that sense of actively reading and engaging with yourself, with the world. So there was I Love My Hair which was a celebration of this little girl. There's another book that came after that called Bippity-Bop Barbershop, which was a book my publisher in fact asked me to write for boys. So, you know, publishers are like, oh, this one did well for girls, so let's get one for boys. But even that was prioritizing that community relationship, the barbershop, the father or the son, what goes on in those spaces that really primary gathering space in African-American communities. And other books really engaged with how kids could take the gifts and the talents that they have and bring it out into the world. For example, my picture book, Destiny's Gift, is about a little girl who uses her love of writing to try to save a community bookstore that's in danger of closing in her neighborhood. So she becomes the memory of the store and tells the story of why this place is so special and how kids can use the things that they have to make a difference in their community. So I always try to kind of sneak a little of that in as well. Absolutely. I wanted to go back to something and actually the audience will be opening up for questions shortly. I have a couple more questions here. I wanted to go back to something you mentioned earlier about the sort of cost of all of this, of book bans both in terms of the financial cost for the district, the man hours, the amount of time that you're just generally spending on going through reviews, but also in terms of the learning environment in the community, right? So can you just talk to me a little bit more about the cost of these efforts to ban books and both how it sort of wears on the community but also how it can bring people together as they're fighting back against these efforts. It has been so welcoming to connect with people who are on the same page in this journey that we've had against banning books. We've got several librarians that are in our community. I met a librarian recently and she was just talking about in Tennessee, we have all these laws about penalizing them or putting the librarians in jail and she was like, we are the quietest most docile people. We're not trying to sexualize kids or anything. So I think a bad rap is pushed upon them because of this. But the districts are, you know, when you think about the man hours, I think one article that I was reading, it was over 200 hours that had been put into the community and you have several people that are putting time into this and so when you calculate that I can't remember if it was Texas or Utah but it was like $100,000 is what it was costing this school district and I'm not sure about you all but my school district can use a lot of the resources in other areas. I'm recently, probably in the last week, the state of Tennessee decided that $1.9 billion in funding, federal funding is not going to come to us because of different concerns that they have. We need that. Our schools need that. Our teachers are not being paid adequately already. Every time I turn around the PTO is asking for money for something. We need resources that we already need that we're having to apply to this for a political agenda so it's really frustrating that we're having to do this but it's something that our community is really standing against. I've been very proud of the advocacy and support that we are having but I hate that it's at this expense but it's definitely good to be able to connect with like-minded people on one accord. Absolutely. There's been a as this has become a more national issue, there feels like there's a misunderstanding about what books students are actually reading at what age. Can you just talk to me a little bit about the levels that the different levels of children's books. Going from a child's book to a young adult book to a more advanced book and how that difference what that difference actually signifies to authors, to publishers and how students are actually receiving that information. Please jump into it. I think a lot of it is tied to the curriculum that kids are learning in school and also developmentally so if you have like pre-K there are a lot of board books so developmentally you think about a kid holding a book or biting a book and things like that and also the stories tend to be pretty simple. My picture book I love my hair and the Bippie Bop Barbershop book that both have board book versions of them and so it really kind of um pick up my keys. We all have a real luck parent. No, it's okay but it really I think it really is based on you know kind of developmentally picture books can generally be used up to probably third grade kind of traditionally people are using picture books but then when you think about it picture books are appropriate for all ages so it's hard to say which books are appropriate at which age and then middle grade that's generally for kids who are getting into that more advanced reading there's chapter books in between there which kind of bridge the gap between the picture books and getting into more complicated stories more complicated vocabulary grade books which thematically get a little bit more complicated as well as the literature you can do a lot more in terms of themes and the types of things that you can cover I'm approved so I tend to err on the side of I'm not really that interested in doing sexual content or really traumatic hard stuff for kids I really like the idea of kids getting a break I think somebody said that and kind of really having fun when they read so for me not to say that I don't tackle things but it's for me that's really important but I think YA you have a lot more room to deal with more serious subject matter and you can talk about that one I've never written a YA so essentially the different categories we like to think of young adult grade early ed books as if they are the genres but that's just the age designation and making sure that the content within the pages are developmentally appropriate and so also something that comes up in the scholarship is that very often as adults we tend to essentialize children we like to think of them as these young beings who have no world experiences but they are watching and they are observing and there have been various studies where scholars have been able to mock a town hall where people want to ban books and have the students play the role of the parent who wants to ban the role of someone who doesn't want to and they are able to critically engage in these discussions and furthermore when a book ban occurs it really sparks the curiosity of the young person I definitely remember when I was in high school we were reading romance novels we had no business reading but it's because we were essentially you know trafficking them and stolen goods where like go and read this quietly and don't tell anyone and so this is something that has not gone away and in fact when we push these book bans we are then creating an environment where it's other young people grappling with these texts with one another and their level of knowledge around the topic is usually around the same place so it's very uninformed people leading uninformed people whereas teachers are skilled in this you know we wouldn't go to a doctor who is prescribing us like this is what you need to take and say are you sure doc you know all those years of education that you went through do you know what you're talking about so our teachers are very much equipped to handle this but we're dealing with a lot of issues in this regard and finally one thing I would say is that you know books in particular they are sites where culture wars are waged because of the power that they have in allowing us to grapple with the world and libraries in particular face this tension where they are you know why they might not be beholden to advertisers and the way that a lot of organizations are they are partially taxpayer funded and so they are grappling with this duality of wanting to be a place of intellectual freedom while understanding that at any point someone does not like what you're talking about your funding might be taken away and then there goes that space that is so important for us as a community absolutely so now we would like to open the floor up for a question and answer we'll have a microphone coming around and we'll also have some questions online so if you have a question just raise your hand I think we have one right here thank you so much for this discussion I'm with the Education Trust and you touched on this Natasha a big issue for for us in a report we recently released was finding that even when we see diverse books in classrooms the characters that are included from marginalized groups are often negative in their portrayal they're really limited in their presentation and when we see topics discussed that disproportionately affect these populations like racism like climate change they're sanitized and minimized to ways that really don't allow students to understand the topic outside of that book to connect to their own experiences and right now so much energy is dedicated to just combating the bands to books so I don't know if maybe from some lessons from history of successes against book bands close work on the ground in schools what lessons or what direction might we be able to take this to shift the conversation back towards the important work that far preceded this ban towards increasing diversity and making it much more better in terms of representation I could share a little bit on that I think a lot of times we have groups that are looking for their own agenda and so it makes it really difficult to try to get it back on target and one thing that one will call has been successful at doing is continuing to be a president in the room and continuing to try to spread a narrative that we feel needs to be spread while we do have these outside forces that are bringing up these other topics it's like you have to redirect it constantly so for me that's one of the ways that we try to to deal with that is by sharing another voice or that could be writing an editorial or an op-ed to try to redirect those conversations so that's one way that we can kind of look at it that's part of my dissertation I'm in the middle of it right now but something to keep in mind is very much that idea of framing and how we have these discussions in the first place it's really important for us to make sure that when we are talking about the books that we are helping to move the narrative forward in a way that is not staying in the bookman you know that was something I alluded to earlier like even when we talk about bookman we talk about them within an educational context which is very important and true however it extends past the classroom because all of these narratives that we are not getting access to or that we're getting the sanitized versions of it then impacts when someone does get something that is a closer reflection to what has actually occurred they're like well that's not how I learned it and so there is this battle but you know there are successful groups who have been overturning these bands there are young people in particular who are pushing and attending school board meetings to help talk about why they want these bands to be reversed there are authors who are getting becoming litigious right they are going after state school departments to be able to overturn the bands as well and so whenever we talk about book bands and we only focus on the bands that are occurring and we don't raise the overturns or overturning of these book bands to the same level of attention then we are reinforcing the status in the status quo I also think that this kind of moment that we're in allows us to kind of go back as you were saying go back to history and see what kinds of things worked and kind of reframe our ideas of what activism means I mean we need people in all of the sectors and all of the pieces you know the lawyers the teachers the activists everyone needs to be a part of this but again going back to that idea we also should value the power that we have to communicate with each other so engaging kids with what they're reading does this reflect your life does this feel like it's something that you know is respectful of you is respectful of your experience how do you feel about this I wish that you know every school visit I go to I tend to ask those kinds of questions the last school visit I had actually was a library visit and I was telling the children that I write about black kids or that I like to feature African American kids because I feel like a lot of the work that's out there about our experience as we've discussed is very narrow it doesn't incorporate all the wonderful things that you guys like to do you know one kid came up to me and he's like I'm having a birthday party from my hedgehog and so it's you know creating spaces where kids can express what they are regardless of what the book is saying or using the book as a way to kind of talk back is is this something that feels good to you is this something that feels right and in terms of activism I think there is a movement here that also needs to start up with our criticism and engagement of the publishing industry and I'm not you know putting down any publishers but I think there has to be a way I'm not sure where the process is of deciding you know this is how this community reads or this is what this community values I'm old enough to remember back in the 90s when there was a direct shift from more literary texts when you had people like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison there was a real movement of black literary fiction and then all of a sudden it was black urban fiction it was these very even stereotypical situations and every publisher was saying oh well we want to engage black people this is what they are going to read and I'm like well what studies did you do about that who did you talk to about that and so I think there is a real opportunity to use our buying power to use our you know intellectual and social power to engage with that kind of structure as well and to say hey we want to have more diversity on this level as well we have questions online we got a question online yeah what organizations or efforts can school librarians reach out to for help if they face community or municipal bands yes one of the studies that I read talks about NCTE and how they have these resources teachers to be able to tap into to be able to learn about how you can go about combating these bands so some of the recommendations that they have is when you have a text that you want to present to the class one reading it yourself but then also going through and any parts that might be part of concern really highlighting why you think this book is instrumental for discussion and critical engagement in your class so that means preparing beforehand which of course translates to more work for the teacher but there is this level of and sometimes also the studies find and then we'll talk about this in the second panel is that because of all of these bands you're finding that teachers are censoring themselves school boards are censoring themselves and so when you decide that you want to be the person who is presenting these books it becomes an act of planning where you write the reasoning and the rationale you talk with your principal depending on what the situation might be maybe you tap into a lawyer but all of these of course are dependent on resources time, human power to get it done as well and then I believe as well in the next panel we'll talk a little bit more of that and have some opportunities so stay tuned we got time for one more question if there's one in the room have another one online if not okay how does that a handful of parents have been able to make blockbuster noise to ban books that they believe don't impact learning and support American history I think this question is specifically related to groups like Moms for Liberty and the like so when you examine the history of book bands that Texas banning that I mentioned earlier where they were looking at the history books and deciding we're going to change these things it was led by one organization and so what the organization did was provide the template for future organizations to do this outside of the historic or textbook space into what we are seeing now in the literary or the fiction space as well so these organizations are being funded by individuals who have a lot of money who have a lot of stake in maintaining the status quo who have a lot of stake in making sure that certain groups are not represented politically et cetera et cetera so these individuals are being bolstered in that regard but there was something that Natasha mentioned earlier and that's something that I highlight in my work as a critical scholar is that even the everyday person has power when we come together and we are able to say hey if this is just one parent who has a subjection and 20 of us do not we if we are a democracy ruled by the majority then we have this opportunity to come together and say while this person has this concern and they are valid and perhaps how their child is receiving this information it should not translate into a ban for all of our children especially when we know children from historically marginalized backgrounds are not reflected in the work that they or the books that they read which then has lasting ramifications we had in our district we had a group that I won't say their name but frustrated about seahorses because they are teaching gender fluidity and I'm going oh my god like y'all love God but y'all are mad about God's creature so it's so frustrating I've often been accused of blessing people with seahorse earrings that's my thing now that's my animal now but you know I just think it's so frustrating and very insensitive to parents who want to have deeper conversations with their children when you can't have a conversation with your child about the male seahorse having a baby or I think at this time this group was they were frustrated about a book that talked about the deaths from Katrina those are natural things that we all have to learn how to communicate and conversate on we have to have hard conversations with our children but just because one person does not want to have that hard conversation doesn't reflect on everybody else and that's what we have to keep in mind when we have these people who are trying to stifle the opinion of others based on their limited access to information because I have conversations I have difficult conversations with my children all the time because they're going to get stopped by the police and they're going to have all these other things that they will face and I need to prepare them for that. And just lastly on that I think you bring in a really good point about kind of the nurturing that needs to happen I think the impact of this on children of all races but especially those who are being banned whose experiences are being banned and who are seen to be less important because we want to protect the sanctity of these other children's emotions and their experiences that's another whole piece of it and how do we nurture and support those kids and also within that context that's also going to help shift the dynamic I think because once we can chip away at these paradigms of continually fighting these stupid administrative bans and we really start to care for one another I think we can solve the problem but it can start to chip away at some of these issues Absolutely and of course there's so much to discuss but we're going to have to leave it there so Maika, Ravita, Natasha thank you so much for a fantastic conversation Thank you Adam, thank you Moderated by New America's own Lisa Guernsey the director of the Learning Sciences Exchange in a senior fellow and strategic advisor in the education policy program with a work focusing on open and inclusive education as a core tenant and the author of Tap, Click, Read Growing Readers in a World of Screens a look at the importance of libraries librarians and ecosystems that provide a full literary landscape to kids and families Welcome Lisa Guernsey in our second panel Great and yes please my panelists come on up, hello everybody that was such a fantastic discussion that we just had and I'm ready to kind of dig in here because this next panel is one that's going to take all of that great richness from the first one and then help us continue what the Q&A was getting us into which is how do we activate that so that the title of this particular panel is the approaches that can promote access to diverse educational materials and we are broadening it in this conversation so that we certainly are talking about books as well as e-books but we also want to think and talk about instructional materials of all kinds including those that are digital so it's time for us to recognize we're in a digital age there's lots of ways to be using new materials with kids in ways that are enriching them and that are showing them the full diversity of our country and our experiences so I'm going to take a minute to quickly name our amazing panelists right here but then I'm going to have each of you introduce yourselves fuller with that as well as answering a little question for me so what we've got with us today are folks who really understand these issues on the ground because they work in schools and with educators so to my left is Kyle Zimmer who is the CEO of First Book and First Book is also the backbone organization of the diverse books for all coalition which we'll hear about in a little bit we have with us Becky Henderson who is at the Westmoreland Intermediate Unit in Pennsylvania and who works with educators across many different districts and as well we have Masiah who is Raoul who is a professor of education at the University of Richmond, spent a social studies teacher in Virginia I first got to know Masiah who through some reporting that we were doing on social studies standards in Virginia and who also is the co-host or host of the leading by history podcast so thank you all so much for being with us we've just heard really these powerful examples and reasons for why students and children need access to the diversity of books out there and I wondered if you might take a minute to just tell me a little bit more about how you're connected to this issue but then how you've worked to make sure that the students that you're working with have access to these books and educational materials so I'm going to let's see I think I had a specific order here yes I'm going to start with you Becky in the middle and then I want to go to you Masiah and then Kyle so but Becky please tell us a little bit more about yourself you're making sure this is going to happen for our kids yes thank you thank you for having me I'm Becky Henderson I am a curriculum services supervisor at Westmoreland Intermediate Unit and in Pennsylvania Intermediate Units are educational service agencies we are one of 29 and we are under an umbrella organization called Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate Units or PAIU in education we really love our acronyms however what we do is all things related to teaching and learning in the curriculum services team so anything that we can do to support our school districts and in Westmoreland County we have 17 public school districts that we serve as well as I think approximately 42 non-public schools that we also serve so anything that is coming from the State Department of Education anything that our school districts need support with we are there on the ground level helping them out now at the state level I also am helping to co-lead I am one of two co-leads for our open educational resources initiative that we have going on at the state it is very much a grassroots movement for anyone in the audience that is not aware open educational resources are openly licensed available instructional resources that can be used in the classroom so they can be either digital or print materials they can be any format that you can use in the classroom and the best thing about them is that they can be really manipulated, modified, adapted to meet the needs of your specific student population so they give us a lot of flexibility so when our textbooks can be very rigid and very formulaic these resources give us the ability to adapt and modify to meet individual student needs and so that is where I come into play fantastic so we will get a little bit further as we get down the line I want to hear a little bit more about how to use those kind of openly licensed materials for this kind of work but Masiya let me go to you Masiya who is role and I wear a lot of hats in the education world supporting school districts in their social studies programings particularly the University of Richmond working with teacher mentorships to support teachers in the classroom so we can keep our teachers you know where we need a most which is in front of those students and then also the founder leading by history which is a collective of educators from around the central Virginia area who work to support school systems to provide training counseling etc and we have a podcast by the same name in which the attempt is to bridge the gap between K-12 education and higher ed we know that teachers don't have the ability sometimes because of the weight that they have in their shoulders to read thousand page books and be able to be up on the cutting edge of every single piece of history so what we attempt to do with our program and leading by history is to bridge the gap by bringing the scholars the folks who are really on the cutting edge of research in history social science and world events to the stage to have a 30 minute to an hour conversation so within that time educators can listen be up on the latest and greatest research and be able to transfer that back to their classrooms and their schools that's the work that I do yes and we'll be ready to hear about some ways that I'm ready to hear about some ways that you've been able to use those kinds of connections to really get into some of these really tricky tricky situations that teachers might find themselves in so Kyle and we'll go to you in terms of your kind of connection to this work sure I'm Kyle Zimmer I'm president and CEO and one of the co-founders of an organization called First Book it has been dedicated to educational equity it's a non-profit dedicated to educational equity for I think we're in our 32nd year and we have really approached our work on equity issues for kids in need through sort of two different lenses one is by listening at the heart of our work is a community an online community of 575,000 educators and program people Title I classrooms and homeless shelters and every other setting you can imagine and we really listened to them to the point where we've built a research arm called First Book Research and Insights that now is generating about 20 studies annually to really aggregate and amplify the voice of this critical group of people they have never been hesitant to tell us how important diverse books are in the lives of the kids they serve I just even years ago there was we ran a significant survey that showed that over 90% of the respondents told us that they knew that the kids in their classroom would be more engaged readers if they had books that reflected their cultures in their lives 90% and so we never ignore a response like that and so we've had waves of work in the area of to promote diverse content but the second lens and this is a primary way we've addressed the need for diverse books is by really focusing on the need for market strength and to use market leverage because there's actually as everyone in this room and certainly everybody online knows there's an enormous group of people who want these books who love these books but we have to make that market visible and valuable to the publishers yes this conversation is not black and brown but it's also about green and so first book has aggregated that market on behalf of the community we represent and in 2013 for example we established something called diverse or we established something called the stories for all initiative where we brought together about a million dollars worth of buying power on behalf of our community and we launched an RFP to the publishing industry saying the publishers who step up with the highest quality most diverse content we will make significant purchases from you because we wanted to plant the flag and say there's a demand for these books there's a market for these books and we're putting money on the table you can find our stories for all initiative on our first book Marketplace which is our e-commerce site that provides free and low cost books and all kinds of educational resources including digital to our community and you know we move 15 or 16 million books annually through this system with a very very significant push for diverse content in fact one fact that I found out yesterday which I love is that in 2022 88% of the orders that came through the first book Marketplace included diverse content and so we're really there to increase accessibility and to push the price down and the relevancy so what I'm hearing and we certainly heard this on the first panel is that there is absolutely demand for these materials across all sorts of different kinds of stories and ethnicities and backgrounds as well as parents wanting it's not just that educators are looking from the parents do too and yet we are at this moment where there are I was hearing it described the other day in a webinar that really what we have may be there's some hard bands out there more pernicious maybe the soft bands where there's a bit of self-censorship happening where educators are just not so sure they're going to put that book on their syllabi this next year because they just aren't so sure they want to get that call or they're not ready to kind of deal with whatever anger might come out so how are we going to square this where there's demand we're seeing and we're also understanding how much this matters for student success in school and helping children learn to read and yet we are finding that teachers are feeling squeezed or kind of putting themselves in these kind of soft band situations I wonder if I might go to each of you to tell us a little bit about how you're navigating that and thinking about strategies that our audience may be able to use as well because we have to recognize everyone's in different contexts and some folks are coming from areas where it's not going to be so easy to stand up and say yeah sure I'm going to put this book on my syllabi so who might want to take that question some kind of strategies are you using I can step up and talk about the two studies we just ran because I think the way we're navigating it is trying to inject actual data into the national discourse on this which has been may I just say largely fact free right and so we've run two studies one we just released today I believe and that deals especially with what you're describing I'm going to look at my notes because there are a lot of numbers and I want to say it correctly just a few of them we released today a study of 1500 educators showing that nearly two thirds of them responded that book banning is having a negative impact on their ability to teach 71% said the book banning undermines their expertise makes them feel distrusted and 72% said that restricting book access decreases student engagement in reading this is really important because only a third of the respondents said that they were actively under in a district where book bans were being laid down and so it shows the chilling effect that you're describing and I'll hold my fire on the other study we were we heard it here first this is breaking news it's thrilling and the fact that that's across a nationwide survey of teachers so we're talking about those from districts that are rural as well as urban as well as urban so with that setup then now you guys get to be the solution to this what are the strategies for coping with this what teachers are facing right now well I think that overall when you talk to teachers they very much understand and are very passionate about wanting to put resources in front of students that meet their needs and that are best for students instructionally, emotionally they know that they need to do what is best for kids and they want to do that I think part of that is providing them with high quality professional learning experiences that help them to understand how to do that because part of it is they're a little unsure as to how to find the correct resources where to go to do that and then how to have the conversations with administrators and with their community about the intention behind the resources that they're using and I think that that is sort of the gap that we need to bridge right now so what we have been trying to do in Pennsylvania is talk about open educational resources talk about the training that they need to have to find the correct resources where to go to find those resources and vet them how to make those modifications and then when they select a resource how to have the conversation around why you're selecting that resource with various stakeholders so that you can discuss all of those concerns that people can have from a broader standpoint because when you have the conversation it becomes much more transparent I selected this resource it met these needs for students it didn't meet these needs and I understand my student population and when you can do that it can become a very powerful experience for student learning and just to have you elaborate just a little bit Becky these resources can look like what are we talking about books are we talking about lesson plans are we talking about prompts for writing so open educational resources can actually be anything they can be all of that they can come in the form of a full blown textbook there are open educational resources that are textbooks they can be lesson plans they can be just individual activities it can be interactive it can be a static worksheet there's so much that's out there one of our favorite places to go to is always OER Commons because there's so much in that one repository that that's the first place we always send teachers to go but there are so many websites out there that they can go to that it can be a little overwhelming which is why we always go to one place first because that's where most of them tend to be funneling through anyway but really if you think about what teachers do in the classroom every day when they have a resource that doesn't meet their needs they tend to create their own anyway and those are also open educational resources so if they're already doing this work then we should honor that we should talk about what they're doing to meet the needs of their students and name it for what it is and help them to understand what they're doing and why and so how about how you've managed this yeah so there are a couple ways number one the issue is that people are yearning for conversation and how do we have conversation about things that are extremely delicate without quote rubbing people the wrong way and getting into a tit for tat struggle over words I've always said that if you study human psychology and the behavior of human beings in sociology that folks generally don't argue over truth so if I say this is a podium most people will be like okay no problem but if I say this is a lion immediately you start to feel like wait a minute where is he coming from what is he saying so there are trigger responses when we engage something that we don't understand to be true right so then that requires a dialogue because I can either say you're crazy man it's not a lion or I can start posing questions so one of the things that I have helped teachers with as I work with you know divisions around the commonwealth is a model for engaging challenging conversations with confidence because that's one of the issues is that many times teachers aren't feeling the confidence should I choose this book maybe there's nothing wrong with this book but what if there is what if I end up in the news what if I end up on TV because of this and a lot of times they end up second guessing themselves because we haven't we haven't empowered them with the tools to have conversation so the first thing you would do is you know in the model that I developed for having challenging conversation is you can enter it at any of the four stages but the first thing is to get a handle on what the motivation is for the conversation do I want to talk with the person who says this is a lion because I just want to make them look bad and I want to prove to them that this is an alliance I need to get the motivation I need to then set clear expectations for the conversation you know is my expectation again to make you see my point or is the expectation for me to learn the seven habits of highly effective people says we must seek first to understand before we seek to be understood right so these are these are things we have to trigger ourselves into this process we have to also be very thankful for conversation that gets heated and I think that's a missing element in most of the conversations is that generally when I've had challenging conversations with parents or folks from the community who have had concerns even if the conversation doesn't go the way that I would want it to go in the end I'm genuinely thankful for the opportunity to step my game up to figure out ways to connect and get understanding and there's no way that folks can't feel that because as human beings we have that emotional response to sincerity right so these are elements that we can use when we're engaging challenging conversation and once teachers can understand how to have conversations in their classrooms conversations in their school buildings that become a little edgy sometimes then they'll have the confidence to engage texts and manuscripts books etc because then we start to model for them the proper way in which we do history there's a methodology to history and as a historian I recognize that sloppy history is another reason why people argue right there's a method to how you do it if we're in a classroom and a student says was Thomas Jefferson a racist and the teacher's response is well yes he had over 600 enslaved people on his property without well that's now what you're doing is you're you're pushing your view and the way you see things on a student without even attempting to show them how you arrived at that point so what do you do you use the methodology of history you start saying first of all what do you mean by racist can you define racism what does racism look like now and was there racism during the time period in which Jefferson existed right now let's look at the writings of Jefferson let's look at his notes on Virginia let's look at the things that he made statements about Phyllis Wheatley and others with regard to black people now let's take those statements and let's line those up against what the scholars have said are definitions of racism and then you allow the student to be able to come to their own understanding then they will tell you I think he was a racist because of these reasons or not so at the end of it all you know the method that that we use is not to directly address the book banning but what we attempt to do is to give teachers the confidence so that even when they're in a district where they're under pressure they can feel confident that no this is the right book for me to use with my students number one it's been approved by our division or there are divisions around us who are using it but I know how to use this text using the methodology of history and a search for truth to spark genuine conversation and for students to use inquiry to arrive at their learning if we do that that sets the groundwork for everything that that's needed when it's time to then deal with the banning of books genuine conversation and dialogue and professional learning and listening to teachers and yet we are where we are right and so but these all feel like they could be doable if they're if we start really centering them or we're putting that first and I find it fascinating actually and I'm curious what you guys think as well but as you're as you're speaking Masiya I'm thinking about the dialogue that may not be happening at the school board meetings where there's just someone standing up at a podium quoting kind of ad nauseam from a book they might not have actually fully read but they've read those particular passages right so how do we how do we shift it so there can be that dialogue I don't know if any of you have thoughts on that I'll jump in if I keep jumping in in front of you you need to kick me but I think one of the ways where we're working on this is to try to shift the narrative to talk about the benefits of diverse content and we have we ran a study that we just unveiled at CGI Clinton Global two weeks ago and it there was a hole in the data where there wasn't an intensive evaluation of what happens in a classroom when you infuse a classroom library with very high quality highly diverse content diverse books so we selected 450 classrooms across the country and we did just that we infused them with beautiful new diverse books and then we stood back and watched what happened over a six month period and the results were really compelling number one the collective number of hours the kids in those classrooms read jumped by four hours per week and number two their reading scores jumped by three percentage points over the nationally expected averages and the kids who are struggling the most in those classrooms were the ones who saw the biggest jumps higher still the classrooms that had bilingual books and LGBTQ so what we're trying to do is say not get into a fist fight I do my best to avoid fist fights just want to say that out loud but it's really to start saying why are these important to kids who are from those underrepresented cultures and to every kid because we are in a highly diverse country a highly diverse wonderfully diverse world and we need every child to have that advantage to see themselves to see other people to have a bit of understanding and empathy and so what we learned was that it not only elevated engagement but it also showed a boost in academics and I think when we're in a country as we are where fourth grade reading proficiency scores are tanking that what we have to do is use a tool that we know works it's a real power tool and we have to it's incumbent on us in this crisis to use that power tool in every classroom for every child and so what we're trying to do is infuse data about the benefits of these books the power of these books in the lives of kids all kids but especially with the focus on kids in need since that's our focus population but that's something we've stepped up changing the narrative there I think we have to if you wanted to add anything to that Becky I will say to your point about not getting to fist fights I think most people do try to avoid those I'm relieved since you're within this well you know the loudest voices tend to be the ones that are heard but as our executive director at our intermediate unit frequently says the truth speaks softly and I think that's something worth remembering in moments like this our leaders are listening in our districts they are observing everything and they are trying to be thoughtful and they are trying to be strategic and they are trying to understand that there are so many emotions around these issues but they ultimately do want to do what is best for students so when they have to decide what's going to go in front of students they need to hear everything they need to understand the emotions around it but they need to make the best decisions because of test scores because of making sure that classrooms are a safe and supportive environment for students so they're going to sit back they're going to observe we have two years but one mouth for a reason right so they're going to do a lot of listening before they speak up and say things and it takes a long time for us to come to those decisions about what goes in front of students we need to honour that process and we need to give them time to really think and come to the conclusion about what goes in front of students but ultimately we need to hear all of the voices so we need to give our teachers space to be able to talk we need to give parents space to be able to talk and we need to hear from students too about what they want to see reflected in their materials because they should have a voice in it as well and at the end of the day I think we need to remember that studies do show that when students see themselves reflected in their instructional materials they connect with the content on a deeper level and that their test scores will increase so if at the end of the day we want to see student scores increase we need to make sure that there are diverse resources in front of students and that doesn't need to be an argument it doesn't need to be a fight it needs to be spoken about in a very logical and practical manner but it needs to be a conversation giving the space for that is reminding me and I wanted to make sure that those of you listening and others who might know a little bit about New America and our teaching learning and tech team know that we have an initiative that's our inclusive and open education initiative on Mei Chang as the director and helping us put this event together and there are several reports and research analyses that we've been pulling together over the years in that initiative to show the data and the research on what is working for students and what do teachers need and that's included actually a round table a year or so ago that included youth voice to your point Becky and it was really fascinating the students talking about what they wished they had more of and wanted more of and the teacher saying I hear you but I need to navigate some stuff first but we just need the spaces for the students to be able to be heard as well so I'm going to take us to one more question and then start thinking about in the audience questions that you may have for us as well but I wanted to take us into that digital realm a little bit more for a moment just recognizing that it's 2023 and that we all including students even as young as you know 8 and 10 years old have these things in their hands and they're seeing all sorts of stuff that others might think they're trying to keep away from them but they're not necessarily doing so and we are seeing that we can use new technologies to either activate and provide platforms for teachers to learn from each other for new data to be collected for books that might be banned in one library to be available in an electronic format through apps for example a shout out to the digital public library of America that's been working on some projects in that vein so I wanted to each of you to just tell us a little bit about some tools or platforms resources that you've used in your work that are recognizing kind of the affordances of this world and maybe I'll go if I can I might go to you first Masayahu because the work that you did in Virginia with many other social studies leaders across the state to pull together electronic resources on African American history has come to mind for me I don't know if you might want to describe a little bit of that work to the audience and any other tools that you're using as well. Right well you know as the president emeritus of the Virginia Society's Leaders Consortium shout out to them I know they're watching and that's the premier social studies organization for the state but as a part of that organization I worked with the former president Bo Dickinson and I as the president of the organization we pulled together the organization represents a large swath of over 130 districts that are in the state we pulled together museum educators we pulled together educators from historic locations we pulled together supervisors from different divisions across Virginia and we created something called Dr. Carter G. Woodson Collaborative and you can look that up and just type in Dr. Carter G. Woodson Collaborative it'll come right up where what we did was we took the technical edits that were done by the African American commission on history education to improve our standards in the state of Virginia and we wanted to show teachers how do you take these edits and turn them into actual lessons that can be used but having it on an open education resource so it's available to anyone everywhere at all times and so that was a major undertaking very successful we were able to really create some work that teachers enjoyed appreciated it's all set ready to go click and go but then also the opportunity is there for teachers to add on for their specific students right to give accommodations to students but the purpose of that is that we recognize that the standards in Virginia the governor recognize the then governor recognize that the standards were lacking in its ability to have diverse voices and so the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Collaborative was developed in order to bridge that gap so you know I know teachers as far away as Florida were accessing that information recognizing that they needed information for themselves I'd say another thing is that in working with school divisions developing partnerships with those who create you know online resources right you know recently one of retired generals who's a Filipino-American developed a a website based upon the duty of serving the country and created this wonderful array of resources to actually engage Asian-American voices when we talk about the armed services when we talk about battles when we talk about the history of the United States you know those kinds of resources are very important to have and link into the pacing and guiding documents for divisions as well so having online resources readily available when I was in Richmond Public Schools there as the specialist we created a website that's still there called GrowHistoryRPS.com in which we put a link there for growth and cultivation to help teachers navigate all of these wonderful resources so I'm definitely pro-digital resource and I think it's wonderful and I would be remiss if I didn't add that the work that my colleague Annie Evans has been doing with Dr. Ed Ayers in their bunk history and the work that they've been doing with history they've got some wonderful resources with mappings and things that are available to anybody everywhere so yeah digital resources are the way to level the playing field. I'll just put a quick little shout out that we have a report on the Woodson Collaborative within that list of resources as well that I mentioned earlier so Becky. Well I know I already mentioned them earlier but OER Commons has been our go to for all things for teaching and learning anytime we have teachers that need resources in fact at PAIU at the statewide level we now have a PAIU hub within that website where our teachers I want to say since 2017 now to curate, collect resources each of the intermediate units has a group within our hub and in fact we have several work groups that exist there as well. One of our featured work groups is the PA STEM Toolkit which started as a collaboration between the Pennsylvania Department of Education, PAIU and then many teachers across the Commonwealth to find resources connect, collaborate and the hub is the home for everything but that work group specifically still is being modified adapted and reused by educators even today. We are in a process right now where our science standards in the state have been updated to better reflect the NGSS standards. They're not quite exactly the NGSS standards they're a little more Pennsylvania centric however because of this we have a whole new implementation cycle going on across the state and with that we have a strong OER focus on resources the resources in our PA STEM Toolkit are being realigned we have open site ed resources being introduced to teachers across the state so for us OER Commons really has sort of been that one stop shop for teachers to understand to find resources to begin to use them. They integrate into several different LMSs so it's become very versatile for us to say here's where you're going to go here's how you can get started. However they haven't been banned. No not at all. Although the STEM ones probably not but no actually as we look at it from this science lens now everybody has been very willing to embrace this as a new way to approach teaching and learning a new way to think about instructional content instructional materials and I think it's because it's attached to new standards because it's a new approach to instruction it's something that everyone's willing to say oh I need to take a step back because content publishers are not necessarily producing textbooks that are going to meet our needs but we know that these open educational resources are giving our teachers the flexibility to do what they need to with the standards so we have some grace right now and we are definitely leveraging that grace to say this is something that can work regardless of your instructional initiative this is not something separate open educational resources can support a wide variety of things that you do don't look at it as something new. Yeah the um the kind of flexibility within these tools is kind of key to given you know it's a move on a dime depending on what what the current is about there so Kyle I know there are a lot of different kind of tools in your toolbox. There are I've already mentioned the first book marketplace right and that's an important one and I urge you all if you have a minute to take a look at it and through the marketplace we've done with DPLA and New York Public Library and the Obama Administration remember him just a minute but we worked and we launched something called open ebooks and it's still going and we've it was a program with Baker and Taylor and these other great institutions and we have handed out 8.2 million individual codes for kids to be able to download up to 10 books at a time through Baker and Taylor under their phones and so you know we're thrilled about that and thrilled that it's been going over all these years we run something called the accelerator where we listen to our educators listen to the resources that they feel like they need so for example mental health they they don't feel trained on mental health understandably and we reach outside first book and identify great leading experts on mental health on how to talk about race and culture in the classroom and we work with them to create resources that are free and downloadable to our full community but there's one other thing I want to mention because it does have a significant technology element but it's also something that just gives me hope and I think we all could probably use a dose of that and that is first book started about a year ago something called the diverse books for all coalition and for those of you who work in the nonprofit sector you realize that collaboration is not something that comes easy in our sector and this has evolved to over 40 organizations that are locking arms these are all groups that serve 0 to 8 year olds they are all locking arms to focus on collective buying and first book is racing to build the technology underneath that to make that more seamless we are elevating a unified positive narrative that can be shared across the field so that we are using and sharing the same great data that supports the importance of diverse content and also the third pillar is to elevate the interaction between parents and caregivers on these issues to provide resources that really whether they are digital or whether they are traditional print that will really fuel the discussion. Carrie Kajaki please raise your hand. Yes, yes, yes. And so Carrie is the project director of that coalition so if there are any hard questions she is the one who should field them but I did want to I just did want to mention that. Yes, no and speaking of questions we are going to go to questions from the audience online as well as here in the room so I wanted to see if there is anybody here and I know Carrie you might be able to provide a little bit more as well and then we will go to one that is online as well so let's if we could bring the mic here and then we will go to a question online on May if you have one. Two questions. Two questions online, okay. Okay, oh gotcha great. Thanks for the setup Kyle, wonderful. Yes, and please introduce yourself and just be super succinct. Wonderful I am Carrie Kerjak I am the project director of the diverse books for all coalition we have a lot of collaborative efforts happening right now around that collective purchasing purchasing 600,000 copies of diverse titles in the next year and a half so as we are talking about more collaboration I am wondering for the other two panelists what are opportunities that you guys have found for collaboration around these efforts and then for all the panelists maybe to address who are we missing at the table and who can really help elevate this conversation further. That is a great question so within the state of Pennsylvania because we have 29 intermediate units we have what are called job alike groups and those job alike groups are individuals that have similar jobs that meet regularly throughout the year and that is our opportunity to collaborate so we all come together and I actually just sat on two different meetings within the last couple weeks for the curriculum coordinators and then for the instructional media specialists and that is really our opportunity to come together collaborate see what is going on at the state level across all districts what everybody needs and how we can work together to provide supports statewide and then that is actually how we started to create our PAIU hub years ago on OER Commons because we noticed a trend where multiple districts were asking about open educational resources and we started researching where would be a place where we could have a common housing unit for all of these things that our teachers need so anytime we start to have those conversations about what our teachers asking what do they need we find different places different vendors different locations different whatever the case may be and that is where we start to investigate as a group together to see what the need is what are the resources available to us and then we start having those conversations at a bigger level to say okay where do we want to move forward who do we want to involve in that conversation and that is how things really start to work through our job like groups. Well for the Virginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium we partner with matter of fact when the standards battle was in place in Virginia the Virginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium partnered with American Historical Association along with the VASCD and those three organizations we put together a new set of standards to rival the standards that came out that we didn't feel were the best standards for our students within those organizations there are regional organizations that also have not just state but national you know versions of the organization so the Virginia Council for the Social Studies is a partner and then they are part of the National Council for the Social Studies you know Virginia ASCD is a part of the ASCD nationally so all of those organizations meet with subcommittees on a regular basis so for example we just had Arlington Public Schools Fairfax County Public Schools Loudon County like all of those schools in that region they get together and meet several times within the course of a semester to talk about these exact issues so being a part of the Virginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium really provides a networking capability all the way to the national level with regard to social studies education which I might add is the linchpin in all of this conversation right because if we had the proper historical lens and the understanding of the history then a lot of the issues and problems that folks find with certain texts could either be navigated through conversation or we wouldn't be having those problems at all if we really knew the history let's go to a couple more questions yes and just state your name and then your question I listen to these conversations and it sounds like we're often comparing political religious ideology over data or social mobility and that feels like apples to oranges how do we as stakeholders in policy or even just in education make that a bit more linear and also take the honest teachers who already have a thousand things to do and if you want to take that there's a lot packed into that question well first you subscribe to the leading by history pie that's number one and we'll get you straight on all of the things that you don't have time to cover in the meanwhile but I think it's important to realize that the conversation is never going to really be linear right there's always going to be as long as you have human beings we have culture inside of culture you have language you have music you have religion right so we are complex entities as human beings so the conversations will always be complex even though the linear route would seem the most reasonable and help us cut through all of the stuff one of my former superintendents used to always say let's keep the main thing the main thing what happens is we're not keeping the main thing the main thing see it's okay if there are intersections of identity whether it be religion whether it be race whether it be someone's gender identity right like those those complexities exist but then what are we focused on looking at from those different identities and I think that's what you're getting to with your question like how what is the main thing and how do we stay focused on it right the main thing is the children and a lot of times we hear it's a cliche we got to do what's best for kids when's the last time you've talked to one when's the last time you've engaged with the student you know you see these leaders of divisions and they always want the good camera shot when they're going to visit a school and they find the school where all the students that have challenges are out for the day they find the classroom where there's nothing you know really controversial going on and then we get the photo opportunity right and a lot of times we see the political leaders and those in charge telling themselves because you all you have to do is look at the face of the kids look at the face of the students in those in those photo ops and I've seen a photo op recently I won't say who it went and where but they were trying to promote this particular thing like look at what we're doing and I'm looking in there the black kid in the back Asian kids just like you know so it was just like it was it was clear but the they were smiling right we've lost what the main thing is which is our students right and what are students asking for right I'll say this because I want to make sure I get this in before we in today I think about an episode of Good Times which is my family's favorite show to watch and I remember the episode where Michael who's always the revolutionary right the soul brother of the family he obtains a picture of a black Jesus and he puts it up on the wall and his mother comes home and says what have you done don't you dare move my wife Jesus on the wall or whatever and he starts to quote biblical scripture revelations chapter one it says that Jesus was black you know and when they got to the end of the episode we found out that it was a picture of Ned the Wino right it was Ned the Wino's picture but for Michael that didn't matter because he had a craving to see himself in his religious expression so what is Michael asking for and what did his mother do even though she had the hardcore why Jesus on the wall she said you know what you can leave him up for black history month but then after that he's got to come back down I tell that story because Michael didn't care that it was Ned the Wino's image it was the image of a black man and that black image did something to him psychologically that made him feel a belonging and a sense of restoration in his spiritual understanding and his mother allowed him to have that space right so if we get back to answering your question which is why I went through this whole barnyard discussion is that at the end of it all what are the students telling us right amongst the Messiah warriors they don't just say how you doing what's happening they say how are the children and I think that's the main thing where we can take all these identities and multiple perspectives to focus back on that main thing and I think that's me for the evening to go. One last question from online which takes us actually back to the first panel too as well so here's the question Matsuyahu talked about empowering teachers to have difficult conversations with confidence. In the first panel Rabita talked about parents pushing for bands when they were not ready to have difficult conversation is there something the education system should do to help prepare parents for these difficult different conversations. I'll step up and say yes I think that I think it's critical and I think we've got to stop being afraid and I think this is one of the reasons why I want to infuse data into these conversations. Parents should receive the data that first book has and we're not alone in this the data that is supporting the need for diverse books the need for diverse resources and I ran a completely meatball experiment for about two months. Every time I was on a conference call a zoom call and there would be 15 or 20 people you're all on these in fact I wanted to congratulate you all for remembering to wear pants today but but every time I was on one of those calls and these are mostly progressive people who are deeply involved with education this is where you know we're spending our lives and I would say at the first part of the call I just want 60 seconds to say raise your hand if you have called a teacher or a principal or a school district raise your hand tell me what happened and you know what not one time did anyone raise their hands not one time and these are activists these are people like me devoting decades of our lives to these issues and and I probably did it 20 times 20 of these questions right and and that it was deeply troubling to me because I thought if these people are not picking up the phone then what's going on with the parents and you know and you don't have to have a child in that school you don't have to you can live in that community and know that this is important so I do think this has this action oriented we have to get people ready to pick up the phone and be heard because what's happening in these schools is the principal is sitting there and he or she gets five phone calls from people shrieking and that is the appropriate word about pornography or whatever right and they've got that on one side of the ledger and they've got dead silence on the other side and that is on all of us we have got to change that dynamic and they so we've got to get the data out there we've got to share data we've got to make it happen because the silence is killing us Recall to action Can I ask you to answer that question having the parent group sure what can the education system do to help parents get ready for these conversations you know I think that it really comes from the inside or you know kind of like you mentioned having that I don't know if the teachers promote the conversation I think they can also they can ask you to be forthcoming and welcoming in asking those questions but similar to what Cal said I think the onus is on us we have to be engaged we can't sit around quietly and not have the conversations so one of the things that One Will Co has been doing is creating parent cluster groups so that we can go out and have relationships and promote the conversations in the building and let them know that we are a grassroots organization we're open to these conversations and we've actually had some of our district reach out to us about solutions or problems that they're having and ask for resources so all the information that you've shared the resources I got all of them open on my phone so I could use them later but we have to open up that line of communication to be able to have the difficult conversations that we're scared about but I think the way to do that is just being transparent and being vulnerable I don't know everything you don't either but don't get mad at me for asking the question but help me figure out the answer I think that's a great way to end it I just want to say huge thank you to our panel, to the first panel to Joe Wilkes and everyone on the thread and to my colleagues in America but mostly to all of you for being here with us so let's give a round of applause to our audience so thanks everyone have a great night